Information Technology in Healthcare

The Information Technology in Healthcare track at HICSS serves as a forum at which healthcare, computer science, and information systems professionals can come together to discuss issues related to the application of information technology in healthcare. While the medical, technical, and managerial perspectives each contributes to particular aspects of the health care problems, the complexity of today's problems requires more than one perspective. As a unique opportunity for cross-disciplinary interaction, we hope this track will give our conference participants and the readers of these proceedings new insights into the problems they face.

As a result of increased interest in the area, this year we have a record number of minitrack, fifteen, up from ten last year. The new minitracks cover emerging and critical IT related areas in healthcare: evaluation of biosensing-based interventions, big data, health equity, and chronic disease management. Thus, this year we have the following fifteen minitracks:

• Big-Data on Healthcare Application
• Global Health IT Strategies
• Health Behavior Change Support Systems
• Health Information Technology for Development: Use of ICTs for Health Equity
• Health Technologies that Interface Patients and Providers
• ICT-enabled Self-management of Chronic Diseases and Conditions
• IT Adoption, Diffusion and Evaluation in Healthcare
• IT Architecture and Application in Healthcare Environments
• IT Enabled Healthcare Coordination
• Personal Health Management and Technologies
• Real-World Evaluation of Biosensor-Based Interventions in Healthcare
• Security and Privacy Challenges for Healthcare
• Seniors’ Use of Health Information Technology
• Social Media and Healthcare Technology
• User Experience in Information Systems for Health and Wellness

The minitrack coordinators provide brief summaries of their minitracks and overviews of the papers in their sessions.

The 63 papers across the minitracks address a wide range of clinical, managerial, technical issues, social, and policy issues, and report on studies from around the world. Health conditions investigated include Parkinson disease, spinal muscular atrophy, diabetes, dementia, insect-borne diseases, thorny disease and respiratory conditions. Technologies include EMR, drones, image processing, gene therapy, and social media. Levels of analysis range from individuals, to healthcare organizations, to nations.

A number of papers continue a trend of investigating the design, use, and impacts of electronic medical records, with particular foci on information quality and completeness, effective use, and social impacts. Also continuing a trend over the past several years, there is an increase in the number of papers looking at issues around social media, patientcentered systems, and the use of IT as a tool for health intervention. Most all of the papers discuss managerial or health policies implications.

Despite the diversity of topics and countries represented in this track, all of the papers have a common focus: How can information technology be use to improve the quality of care, the efficiency of the delivery of healthcare, and improve the overall health of individuals or populations?

We wish to thank all of the people who have worked so diligently to develop this track; we appreciate the time and effort the minitrack coordinators had to spend over the past year. The high quality collection of papers in the track is the fruit of their efforts. We look forward to the further development of this track. We welcome, and strongly solicit, your participation in this track at future HICSS conferences. Please contact us with your ideas for new minitracks or papers.

We hope you find the proceedings useful and enjoyable.

Track Chairs:

William G. Chismar
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Email: chismar@hawaii.edu

Thomas A. Horan
University of Redlands
Email: Thomas.Horan@redlands.edu